Weimar, Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen, Schwartzburg, Coburg, and the south-western corner of Prussia, are considered to form the area of the ancestors of those Germans who, in the second, third, and fourth centuries played so conspicuous a part on the Lower Danube, under Alaric, Theodoric, and others. The following is submitted as a sketch of their history. As the Hermunduri of the country in which the Albis (the Saale rather than the Bohemian Elbe) rises, they are known to Tacitus; but their power, as elements of the great empire of Maroboduus has been felt by the Romans of Rhætia and Vindelicia nearly a century earlier. Encroaching southwards, and crossing the watershed of the Elbe and Danube (the Fichtelgebirge) they displace the probably Slavonic occupants of the valley of the Naab; press on further both southwards and eastwards; form, along their line, with the nations to the north, a _March_, but not of a character so hostile as to exclude the formation of confederacies formidable to Rome, under the name of Marcomanni; make their permanent settlements on the northern side of the Lower Danube; harass the Roman provinces, Thrace and Mœsia, until, themselves harassed by the Huns, they cross the Danube and effect settlements in Mœsia, where they become Arian Christians, and read the Gospel of Ulphilas, in their native tongue. Portions retrace their steps, still marking their way by conquest. Ataulphus in Gaul, Wallia in Spain, Theodoric in the Italy of the sixth, and Alaric in the Italy of the fifth century, all having been Goths of this division. They leave Germany as Grutungs and Thervings (Thuringians), become Marcomanni along the Bohemian and Moravian frontiers, Goths,[17] Ostrogoths and Visigoths, on the Lower Danube (or the land of the _Getæ_), and Mœsogoths (from the locality in which they became Christian) in Mœsia. Wurtemburg, Baden, and Hohenzollern coincide with the _Agri Decumates_ of the Roman writers. The original inhabitants, I believe, to have been Slaves and Kelts; then Kelts more exclusively (the Gauls of the western bank of the Rhine having encroached); then a heterogeneous mass of Gauls, Boii, Suevi, and Vindelicians, occupying a sort of Debatable Land between the Roman and non-Roman areas; lastly Alemanni and Suevi, the latter being Germans, the former a mixture of populations with the Germanic element preponderating. From these are descended the present occupants. Bavaria, like Prussia, falls into two divisions; the Bavaria of the Rhine, and the Bavaria of the _Danube_. In Rhenish Bavaria the descent is from the ancient Vangiones and Nemetes, either Germanized Gauls, or Gallicized Germans, with Roman superadditions. Afterwards, an extension of the Alemannic and Suevic populations from the right bank of the Upper Rhine completes the evolution of their present Germanic character. Danubian Bavaria falls into two subdivisions.